Private school pupils and traveller communities were identified yesterday as among the highest risk groups for a measles outbreak.

John Ashton, president-elect of the Faculty of Public Health in London, said that the catch-up vaccination campaign announced this week should include specific measures to target “problem groups”.

While traveller communities are believed to have had consistently low vaccination levels, Professor Ashton said that concerns about the now discredited link between MMR and autism had been strongest among the middle classes. “You’ve got a population that rather perversely has been withheld from being vaccinated,” he said.